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London midmorning: Nerves creep in
Wed, 08 Feb, 2012
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London midmorning: Nerves creep in
Thu, 26 Aug 2010, 09:54:00
A rise in commodity prices continues to boost mining heavyweights, offsetting earnings-related weakness, though the blue chip index has given back a chunk of its early lead. <b>Kazakhmys</b> said it remains positive on the copper market after an improvement in prices for the red metal helped it post a sharp rise in revenues and earnings in the six months to June 30. The industrial metals giant raised revenues to $1.52bn from $1.12bn, while underlying profits leapt to $696m from $269m. Average copper prices climbed 73% to $6,981 per tonne. <b>Eurasian Natural Resources </b> and <b>Rio Tinto</b> are close behind, as is <b>Xstrata</b>, bid up after Glencore, the world's largest commodities trader that owns a 34% stake in the Anglo-Swiss firm, reported a 42% jump in first half net income. But investors have sold off <b>SEGRO</b> and <b> Diageo</b> after today's results. The industrial property owner is the biggest faller despite having recently seen an encouraging increase in the levels of enquiries and growing interest in pre-let developments. It hopes to capitalise on this growing level of interest after it managed to edge up net asset value (NAV) per share in a challenging first half of the year. Broker Panmure Gordon remains buyers of the shares, but Evolution Securities playing down the prospect of NAV growth in the second half. Brokers called full-year numbers from <b> Diageo</b> "lacklustre". Developing markets drove overall growth at the Guinness brewer, but North America and Europe remained weak. The group, famous for brands such as Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Captain Morgan and Baileys, said US volumes fell 2% in the year to 30 June. Organic sales growth of just 2% failed to impress. Sales and underlying profits from security group <b>G4S</b> in the first half of 2010 were slightly ahead of market expectations, despite the trading environment remaining challenging. Group turnover was up 4% at constant exchange rates (CER) to £3,632.2m from £3,493m in the first half of last year. The market had pencilled in a figure of £3.6bn for sales. Betting firm <b>William Hill</b> only posted a small rise in half year profits as gains from the football World Cup were partly offset by poor horseracing results. Pre-tax rose to £105.7m in the 26 weeks ended 29 June 2010 compared with £103.1m in the 26 weeks ended 30 June 2009. Turnover was up 12% to £8.64bn. The interim dividend is unchanged at 2.5p per share. Russian gold miner <b>Petropavlovsk</b> fell into the red in the six months to June 30 after problems at its main mine led to a shortfall in production. Student landlord <b>Unite</b> posted an 8% rise in adjusted fully diluted NAV per share and said it is well placed to build on progress over the remainder of 2010 and into 2011. Revenues at oil and gas group <b>Soco International</b> fell back in the first six months of 2010 as production declined, but the company expects development activities to lead to much higher output in coming years. Average daily production totalled 5,191boepd (barrels of oil equivalent a day), down from 6,734boepd in the same period the previous year. Profits soared at <b>Premier Oil</b> in the six months to June 30 as the Asia-, Middle East-, North Sea- and West Africa-facing oil group ramped up output and benefited from higher prices. Pre-tax profits totalled £111.6m, up from £19m over the same period the previous year, as revenues soared to $366.8m from $213.9m. The firm produced 46,600boepd on average, up from 39,700boepd in the first half of 2009.
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